Apollo Bay to Port Fairy

Departing from Apollo Bay this morning we traveled along the Great Ocean Road to Port Campbell.

The road does leave the coast and wind through the ferny slopes of Cape Otway, this rainforest country is silent and untouched and the first stop was a rainforest walk. Now you may think that this does not compute: No roughing it out in a rainforest! In all fairness it should be said that there were wooden boardwalks at the tricky parts of the walk. 

Next stop was the lighthouse at Cape Otway. We were advised to look out for Koala Bears on the last part of the road to the lighthouse. As it turned out we did not have to look for Koalas all we had to do was to look for parked cars because that meant tourists photographing. We stopped a couple of times and I managed to get a picture of a Koala.

Visiting the top of the lighthouse was a windy affair with a great view. 

Back in the car, setting the A/C on 18 degree C and drive to the next event: Tree Top Walking. Tree Top Walking might not be the obvious choice if you have vertigo. As the name suggests some degree of elevation is involved. And it certainly was. Walking on the steel construction looking down I estimated the hight to be approximatly 80 meter in average, it turned out it was 25 meter in average.

When the road meets the coast again we saw some amazing rock formations including the Twelve Apostles, which are huge stone pillars in the surf, carved over time by the crashing Southern Ocean waves.

The apostles were formed by erosion, the harsh weather conditions from the Southers Ocean gradually eroded the soft limestone to form caves in the cliffs, which then became arches, which in turn collapsed; leaving rock stacks up to 45 meters high. The site was known as the Sow and Piglets until 1922  after which it was renamed to The Apostles for tourism purposes. The formation eventually became known as the Twelve Apostles, despite only ever having nine stacks. In 2005, a 50 meter tall stack collapsed, leaving eight remaining.

Port Campbell to Port Fairy is pure transportation.